Electric Forest (19 page)

counter as she did so.
"Actually, no."

He swallowed; the undulation of his throat was well defined, almost convulsive.

But "Ah," he said, most musically, as if he sang, "I should have foreseen this, shouldn't I?"
To her right, thirteen meters away, she heard the side of Christophine's car rising.
Claudio did not turn to look. He looked only at Magdala.

"Don't," he said, 'let her get into the cave."

Magdala made an "0" of her mouth, raised her eyebrows, popped her eyes, miming the astounded puppet,
as once Claudio had done, with her.

"I mean it," he said.

Tm sure you do."

"Christ. You even sound like her."

"Well, I should, shouldn't I? That was what you wanted."

He took a couple of strides forward and she raised the barrel of the delectro.
"You've never fired one of those things," he said.

"No. But at this range, I can hardly miss, can I?"

"Magda--" he said. He stuttered slightly. "Magda there's a reason she mustn't go into the cave

"Of course there is. Your car is there. And the machinery packed up in the chassis-storage compartments
you never showed me. And the simulate of Paul's voice. You haven't had a chance to use that yet. You
delayed for the crowd, an audience tomorrow. Stupid, Claudio. You're stupid."

"Yes, if you like. Anything. But Magdala, you have to prevent Christophine from reaching the cave."

At that moment, Christophine moved across the rock behind Claudio. Watching Claudio carefully, Magdala
saw merely the white blur of Christophine's dress at the corner of her eye. But something at the center of
her emotions, her very life, paeaned, vibrated, glittered.

"Is she there yet?" Claudio asked. "Tell me, Magdala "

The white blur melted in the black mouth of die seventh cave.

"Yes," Magdala said.

He sighed. Suddenly he reached out and took her face in his hands. The delectro pressed into him. He
ignored it.

131

His touch was as she remembered. His beautiful, magical, magician's touch. But it no longer had any
importance. Lust, joy, agony-dregs of the mind. He could stir her, but not hypnotize her not now.

"It isn't Paul's simulate voice she wants," said Claudio softly. "It's you and me she wants, dead. You

couldn't bring yourself to kill her, but she'll kill you with impunity."

"Oh, no," Magdala said. She smiled. She even shifted the delectro slightly, to make him more comfortable as he leaned toward her, she was that indifferent.

"Yes, Magda. Yes, she can. What story did she offer you? I can imagine. But don't forget what's in the left side of the chassis-storage. Your capsule. Do you think she isn't aware of that?"

Before she could assimilate his actions, his hands darted from her face and snapped shut about her fingers.
Simultaneously he jerked aside, wrenching the delectro from her grip. And in the same instant,
automatically, she fired.

Claudio uttered the oddest sound, without timbre, isolated and quite unidentifiable as human. The energy bolt had thrown him, but not far. He landed on the concrete, rolling, curling, uncurling. His right hand contained
the delectro, held by the barrel. His left hand flapped, the bones smashed. He gave the sound again, and it
was exactly as before, unresonant, like wood striking on wood. He curled together, uncurled, curled, and the
delectro dropped out of his right hand. He seemed to try to recapture it. It met his legs as he rolled, shot away, and fell over the promenade into the sea.

Magdala felt a wave of giddiness. The sea, the cliff, the concrete all swung in a huge arc and settled with

nauseating abruptness.

And then Christophine had re-appeared in the mouth of the cave. She emerged like a spirit from hell, lifting one arm. She held a piece of a machine under the other, a metal

plaque of dead lights, trailing wires,

"Good
"
she cried across the night, across the breakers,

₁₃₂

and
Magdala heard her, "Good, Magda
. Clever, clever." Christophine shone whitely. She was a star. She ran down the rock. "Stay there, watch him. Just let me start the car--"

Somehow, Magdala had lost her. Already lost. Magdala saw her run to the car, throw in the mechanical thing, step in after it. Magdala saw the side of the car shut, and heard the motor roar.

Christophine^ car sped up the metal road into the forest.

Magdala stood alone but not surprised. Empty, of course.

Each time the lull came, she heard Claudio make the wooden noise. She understood he was attempting to drag himself along the rock slope, back into the cave.

Across the sea, there came a pang of thunder.
Empty-

Empty-
IV

After some while, perhaps three-quarters of an hour, Magdala began to walk along the slope toward the
cave, following Claudio. She felt a leaden curiosity as to what had become of him. Reiterating ceaselessly
that ghastly wooden grunt of pain, he had gradually hauled himself into the cave, out of sight, And the cave, distance, the sea, had extinguished any further sounds he might or might not have made.

The cave smelled stagnant, smelled of blackness. Though deep in the pit of it a sour light soaked through
the black, which was the faint glow of a car headlamp. Claudio's car lay in the cave, a sea beast, a large

silver fish, stranded by a great penetrating retreating wave. Entering, she could only discern the face of it,
with no sign of Claudio there, but the left-hand side sections of the car, back and front, were raised. As she
went forward and drew level with them, she beheld Claudio, silent now, and slumped across the front
seat. His head hung from his neck rather as the broken hand

133

hung from his wrist, as if his neck were broken, too. But he glanced up at her.

"Just a minute," he said tonelessly. "Not that I don't think you should see what she did. Yes, I think you

deserve that. But not quite yet."

She halted, gazing at him wildly. It was not that she had forgotten Christophine's theft from the car, the

plaque of dead lights under her arm. But all that Christophine meant to Magdala now had been reduced to a
cleaving in twain: the emptiness.

"You gulped down the story that she wanted Hovak's simulate voice tape," he said. "Didn't you realize that
what she took from here wasn't anything like that? I'll tell you what it was. It was a panel ripped out of the
side of a maintenance capsule. That's just the very thing she was desperate to get. The panel carries the

energy charge during Transfer you remember? Never mind. Like any good piece of mechanics, the panel

has a data bank. All she need do now is plug it into the computer at Two Unit and the computer will analyze
the data. In about ten hours, she'll have the answer to C.T. She'll be able to transfer the consciousness of
any man or woman she chooses into any simulate body she chooses, with a success rate of ninety-nine

point nine percent."

Claudio eased his position slightly, lolling his head lethargically to let it rest against the seat.

"I'm tired/* he said. "I can't decide if it's better to explain first, or let you see first, then explain. Whatever I
do, there isn't much time to do it in."

Outside, the thunder split the night. An antiseptic lightning smacked against the sea.

"Damn you," she murmured. "Do you think I'll always comply with everything you say?"

He yawned, and then to her horror, he started to cry.

The tears spilled out under his lashes in two narrow streams. He did not seem aware of them, but they filled her with an impulse to violence. Desperately, she flung herself around the car to the rear.

The entire chassis-storage, three compartments in all, had been opened and withdrawn. Her maintenance capsule was the first thing before her and she almost fell over it. Her hands on the glazium, she stared at
the monster inside, wrapped in its cocoon. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Then she noticed that the wires leading into the drip-feed were not whole, but, having been broken, had been resealed on the breaks. Nor
was her foot unbalanced by an uneven pebble. She moved her foot and looked down and saw a plastic
syringe containing a third its length of greenish fluid.

She must have made a sound. She heard him call her name from inside the car.

"It's all right," he said to her. "It's toxic, but it didn't get very far into your system before I closed the drip. It was a botched job, for Christophine. But, of course, she had other t
hings
on
her
mind."

Magdala was bowed over the glazium capsule, clutching it, supported by it. She recollected the swirl of
giddiness and nausea. Christophine. Christophine had intended to kill her after all.

And then she felt the panel set in the side of her capsule, whole and attached beneath her palm. And then she lifted her eyes and looked across at the right hand storage area, pulled with the rest of the
compartments onto the floor of the cave.

"Claudio," she said, "Claudio, Claudio, Claudio."

He said: "You've seen. Now come here."

"Claudio," she said. She wanted to laugh, but no laugh was available. Instead, she found she was crying, too, and blinkered now by tears instead of desperation, she obeyed him.

His own display of grief or pain or weakness was ended. He had maneuvered himself again, along the seat,
providing room for her to crawl into the car beside him.

"Isn't it fantastic," he said.
-We can cry. Don't you think that's fantastic, Magdala? Like real people. In the

begin-

135

ning, I never knew it could happen. But Magdala, cry sotto voce. Listen to me. I've got about five minutes,

that's all."

Her tears were dry. She sat beside him, her eyes fixed on him, her ears listening. The world had shrunk to

i f
t into her eyes, her ears. Outside, chaos roiled.

Lightning was striking the forest, repeatedly. A thousand colors reflected on the breakers of the sea, the
black wall of the night, poured over into the cave, the car. Yellow, lilac, carmine; purple, turquoise, green.
The shades of antique golden coins, of blue fish scales, of dusks, of dawns, of fires and alcohols, stained
glass, flowers and blood.

"I don't know what Christophine told you," he had said, "but you're going to hear the truth now. And this
version has the advantage of already having been proven to you, by the second maintenance capsule you discovered. The capsule that belongs to me.

"Once upon a time, three years ago, when I was controller of the C. T. Project on Marine Bleu, the

beautiful Christophine was assigned as my sub. I have no doubt she hated that, but she was clever enough
not to show me how much. What she did show me was her order-built bungalow and the way into her bed.
We were near to cracking C.T. That is a fact. Near enough to be excited and to have made provision. The
_{first
two guinea pigs for Transfer were going to be Christophine and myself, and to that end the genetic}
blueprints of both our physical structures had been prepared. Then one night Christophine suggested an
extra angle to me. I doubt you're
au fait
with planetary politics, Magdala, but the position is roughly this.
Earth Conclave comprises fifty colonized worlds. Outside the Conclave there are around a hundred planets
that have broken with Earth and formed their own Federations. There is already a trade war, and what
comes next is anybody's guess. The situation is on ice, but a single advantage in any field could swing the
balance. C.T. is obviously a medical advantage. But it has a far more interesting viability in the area of

espionage. An illus
tration a key figure in a trade delegation can be eliminated and replaced by a simulate. The simulate will
be indistinguishable from the original. Even prints and voice, the two things that surgery can never fake,
would be exact. And inside this simulate is the transferred consciousness of a hand-picked saboteur. With
an E.C. research unit within an ace of cracking C.T., the Out-Conclave Federations were getting restive.
Accordingly, the rat named Hovak had made a contact with Christophine, and introduced to her the
enthralling notion of selling C.T. to the highest bidder, with Hovak himself as well-paid go-between. Wonder
why Christa brought this juicy snippet to me? Because she had to. Because if anyone made the
breakthrough on C.T. I was going to be the one not Christa, though I'll swear that isn't her story.

"I made the breakthrough three nights later. I was alone at the Unit. It was a random series, punched up on
the computer console. The answer came back in sixty seconds. It was that uncomplex. Too uncomplex.

"There isn't time to tell you what went on in my head, Magda. Maybe when they split the atom they had a